5 differences between selling to VP Sales vs VP Engineering

Here are 5 differences between selling to engineering vs. sales orgs.

First, why listen to me? I have built two startups — one aimed at engineering and the other at sales. My latest product is HeySam. It’s an AI Sales Engineer reps can use during calls instead of adding SEs, just in case things get “technical”

Here are the 5 differences:

#1 Bottom up sales

It works well in dev tools, not so much in sales tools. For instance, there isn’t a good analog of a “Dev Evangelist” when selling to sales orgs.

#2 Build vs Buy

There’s always that one engineer that says “I can build this”. Doesn’t happen as much in sales tools. The caveat here is that with GenAI, this trend is showing up in sales orgs too, but I predict it will die out.

#3 Sales window

Sales orgs buy software in windows. If it’s the end of quarter, year, SKO, or mid quarter reviews, things slow down. There are “code freezes” in engineering, but they are not as frequent or predictable.

#4 Willingness to hear a pitch

Sales leaders are far more likely to take a meeting from cold outbound than engineering management. Why? They are curious about what’s out there. They have empathy for other sellers. And they love to connect & talk with founders 😀

#5 Why won’t XYZ build this?

There are hardly any large-scale point solutions in sales. Outreach wants to be Gong, Gong wants to be Outreach, Salesforce wants to be everyone. In the engineering world, you can grow large without branching into unrelated adjacencies. So, for HeySam, I hear this question a lot more than I did in the past: “why won’t XYZ build this?”.

Bonus 6th: VPs of Sales drive a hard bargain:

I mean, these folks negotiate for a living, I can’t out negotiate them 😂

There’s a lot more, but I will stop here. Will post more later.

If you are a VP of Sales curious about what I am building, reach out! I’d love to talk.